PS4 selling faster than original Wii, six million consoles sold worldwide

Following a successful Japanese PS4 launch, Sony are naturally keen to drop some seriously impressive sales figures.

Their latest statement confirms that over six million PS4 consoles have been sold worldwide, bolstered by 370,000 sales in their home territory of Japan. It's a worthy achievement, especially when stacked up with other historic console launches. The original Wii, one of the fastest-selling consoles ever, sold 5.84 million units over the same period back in 2006-2007 - though whether the PS4 can match Nintendo's 20.13 million full-year milestone remains to be seen.

"I am absolutely delighted that PS4 is off to such a great start in Japan," said SCE chief Andrew House. "The responses we have received for the PS4 system's integrated social capabilities have been phenomenal, and I couldn't be more thrilled that gamers are utilising these unique features to engage, share, play and connect with users around the world.

"SCE will continue to expand the world of PlayStation by growing its library of breakthrough games and bringing more innovative features and services only possible on PS4."

Sony also confirms that 100 million pieces of 'Share' footage have been captured since launch, accompanied by over 3.6 million streaming gameplay broadcasts via Twitch. Nearly 14 million games have changed hands, two million of which were copies of pretty-yet-shallow shooter Killzone: Shadow Fall.

Speaking of games, however, Sony will have to seriously up their software output if they want to take a run at the Wii's 20 million sale statistic by the end of the year. Their current success was fully deserved thanks to a superb marketing campaign, consistent messaging and that attractive price point... but beyond some pretty ports and remakes, its exclusive lineup is decidedly less than compelling when compared against the PC, Wii U and Xbox One. Hell, even the Vita. With only inFamous: Second Son and the nebulous #DriveClub (yes, it's officially a hashtag now) to look forward to in the near future, the likes of The Order: 1866 and that Uncharted tease seem very far away indeed.

This was to be expected, of course, since Sony's first-party studios supported the PS3 right up to the release of the PS4 (see also: TLOU, The Puppeteer), as opposed to dropping everything in favour of next-gen projects. We rather suspect that Sony are planning a titanic E3 blowout - which they'll absolutely need to stage since they could definitely use a lot more clout in the exclusive department.

Either way, these are some very impressive numbers, especially when you consider the valiant attempt to overcome stock shortages in many territories. Congratulations all round, but as we like to say, the real work has just begun.

Did you buy a PS4 at launch or over the last few months? If not, why not? What games are you looking forward to, or what games would Sony need to announce to make you take the plunge? Let us know in the comments!

Impressive figures, but I'm still not getting one for a while, simply because there is little in the way of depth to the library at the moment, and PS Plus has more than enough to keep me occupied. If I was still at school/university and gaming for multiple hours every day, it may well be that I'd have finished a sufficiently large number of current/past generation games that a move to the PS4 might seem more logical. But as it is the current generation still has plenty left for me, and it would make little sense for me to move on to the PS4 with so few games out for it.

Personally I'm going to wait for the gaming library to get stronger, by which time no doubt the machine (and earlier games) will be cheaper and any hardware issues will have been ironed out. I'm not entirely sure when that point will be, but I suspect around about a year or so. For me it makes little sense to get one sooner.

Ironically though, I will probably get a Wii U sooner if I can find one for a decent price, solely because there is more depth to the gaming library and games that are notably different to the PS3/360 games that I have. Make of that what you will.

I bought a PS4 on release and I've been happy with it so far - 64-player Battlefield and AC4 free of frame rate drops have provided a good amount of entertainment. Having said that, if I hadn't adopted early I'd be on the outside trying to figure out what next-gen only killer app there is forcing me to upgrade. I don't think Infamous will be it, and nor will anything else with a confirmed release date